The National Australia bank in London is reporting straight-through processing rates of 93% on all foreign exchange and money market transactions, eighteen months on from the implementation of Meridien Link messaging middleware from Misys International Banking Systems.
Meridian Link has been integrated with the bank’s existing Equation back-office system from Misys and Tram, the confirmation matching system from City Networks, to provide three-way matching. The solution provides true end-to-end STP, from the dealing room to transaction settlement, says the vendor.
Says a spokesperson for the bank, “Operational risk reduction is a big benefit of this new system. With true STP, the transaction is untouched by human hands. This is important because as soon as manual intervention is involved, the margin for error increases.”
He says that the bank's settlement team has now moved to "manage by exception", focussing on the small percentage of transactions that fail to automate. As a result, managing payments has now become a subset of other job functions, rather than a dedicated full-time role in itself.